


The Four & Three-Quarters Fic

by cmk418



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Chicago Blackhawks, M/M, Trope Bingo Round 1, Vancouver Canucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-09 23:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmk418/pseuds/cmk418
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave is de-aged.  Daniel deals with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Four & Three-Quarters Fic

**Author's Note:**

> Using my free space at trope_bingo for this one. Takes place during the game between the Hawks & Canucks on April 22 (seriously, these two need to quit getting injured when they play against each other because it's really killing the potential for togetherness.) 
> 
> Standard disclaimer stating this is totally fake and yeah, sometimes a lower body injury is just a lower body injury.
> 
> And if anybody else wants to take this pairing on and write their own take, please, please, please, do it. I'd love to read it!

Daniel’s sitting on the bench, relaxing for a moment, when the kid barrels into the room. He can hear Kesler say “Hey!” and Max’s “What the…” before a pair of skinny arms grab him around the neck, squeezing tight.

“Did anybody lose a kid?” he asks, looking around the locker room, only to have a few shrugs and head shakes as a response.

“Silly Danny,” says the kid.

“How do you know my name?” Daniel asks.

The boy grins at him. “Because you’re you.”

“What’s your name?”

“You know.”

Daniel tries to think back on all the kids he’s met during his career in Vancouver. There’s been quite a few, most of them with overeager parents who were hockey fans. He guesses the boy is about four-years-old. Most four-year-olds wouldn’t seek out a hockey player unless their parents were in the immediate vicinity. He looks around again – there’s only his teammates and he’s met most of their families at various functions over the years.

“You want to give me a hint?”

“What’s a hint?”

“Something to help me out so I can guess.”

“Don’t have to guess. You know. You know, Danny.” The boy looks very upset about this.

Daniel finds himself looking over at Henrik. “I really don’t.”

“Yes, you do!” The boy yells.

Henrik gets down on one knee in front of the boy. “There, there. No need to shout. How do you know my brother?”

The boy moves closer to him and whispers something in his ear. Henrik looks startled for a moment, then whispers in Swedish to Daniel. “He says you took a pre-game nap together.”

Daniel laughs. He did take a pre-game nap with someone, although the someone he slept with was much bigger than this little slip of a child in front of him. Someone that he really should not be thinking about right now or else he’ll get worried because of something that happened toward the end of the period. And he can’t afford to be distracted – more distracted – when they’re playing the Blackhawks.

Henrik sighs. “Whose kid is this?”

Luongo comes over to survey the scene. The kid grins up at him. “Why aren’t you playing?”

“Well… because… they can only use one goalie at a time and today it’s Cory’s turn.”

“Nuh-huh. I know, I know!” the boy shouts gleefully, right before breaking into a high-pitched, slightly off-key version of “Chelsea Dagger”, complete with a dance routine.

“Oh shit.” Daniel grabs the boy by his arm. “Dave,” he says.

Dave claps his hands. “See? You know me.” He throws his arms around Daniel’s neck again and kisses him firmly on the lips.

“I’ve got to…” Daniel picks up Dave and scurries out the door. He moves down the corridor to the visitors’ locker room and very nearly runs into Patrick Kane.

“There you are!” Patrick says to Dave, taking him from Daniel.

“Went to see Danny,” Dave replies.

Patrick looks from Dave to Daniel and then back again. “Weird” is all he says.

Daniel looks at Patrick incredulously. “Your teammate is _four_ , yet the fact that he charged into our locker room is weird?”

“Oh, he does this all the time. Usually just lasts a day or two. Right, big guy?”

“Right,” says Dave.

“Go ahead and say ‘bye’ to Daniel.”

“No!” yells Dave, kicking at Patrick. “Help,” he cries, stretching his arms out to Daniel. 

It’s a little bit heartbreaking for Daniel to see him like this. He makes a decision.

“Will you guys be here overnight?”

“Yeah.”

“I can make sure he gets back to you tomorrow.”

“Why do you think I’ll trust you?” Patrick asks.

“Because Dave does.”

“Wanna stay with Danny,” says Dave.

“I’ll talk to coach,” Patrick tells Dave. “You’ll come with me now and if Q says it’s okay, you can go with Sedin after the game.”

“His name’s Danny,” says Dave.

Patrick begins to move toward the locker room. As they reach the door, Dave yells, “Danny! Score me a goal.”

Daniel grins.

Patrick shakes his head. “See? Weird.” He turns to address Dave. “Little man, you and I are gonna have to talk about what it means to be on a team.”

The door closes behind them.

Daniel can’t help thinking about Dave’s request as he streaks toward the Blackhawks net. He barely feels the sting of Duncan Keith’s skate against his calf as he lifts the puck past Crawford. The goal officially gets him past Marcus Naslund’s record and Daniel uses that as an excuse to get the puck. 

“Danny, Danny, you scored!” Dave says when he finds him after the game.

“That’s right, bud. In fact, I…”

Daniel is unprepared for a little foot kicking him in the shin. He swears in Swedish.

Dave helpfully supplies the translation, “Fuck!”

The next second finds Burrows roaring with a mixture of laughter and barely intelligible English. He picks Dave up and spins him around. Dave screams Daniel’s name again and again.

Daniel swears again, softer this time. “Alex,” he says, a warning note in his voice that is only used rarely and to great effect.

“Your little friend is strange,” says Alex.

“Not little!”

“Right,” says Daniel.

“Not just friends either.”

Dave’s voice carries well for someone so small. For a moment, no one says anything. Then Daniel hears someone whisper, “I think we’ve gone from weird to illegal.”

“No, no, no. It’s not like that.” (Although some people might think that a Canuck sleeping with Dave Bolland was a criminal activity.) “What do you guys know about de-aging?”

“Weird fanfic thing,” says Kassian. Everyone turns to look at him. “What? I do read. And there’s a lot of them about our team.” 

“Well, it’s actually real. Tell them who you are, kiddo.”

“Not a kid.”

“I know that.”

“You know my name. You tell.”

Daniel sighs heavily. “This is Bolland.”

“Dave Bolland?” Kes asks.

“Jesus, Kes, how many fuckin’ Bollands do you know?” replies Cory, wincing a bit.

“That’s why he didn’t come back in the second.”

“Could you have seen it if he did?”

“It doesn’t explain why he’s clinging to Daniel like a limpet though.”

“I love him,” Dave asserts and Daniel nearly drops him.

Kes laughs. “That’s adorable.”

“You do?” Henrik asks.

Dave nods so hard that Daniel thinks his head is going to fall off.

“Well, I can’t say I particularly approve, but it’s about time you found somebody, little brother.” He brings himself down to Dave’s eye level. “And as soon as you’re grown up, change back, whatever, you and I are going to have a discussion.”

“Can we go home now? I’m tired,” whines Dave.

“Sure.”

He takes Dave back to his home and lays the child down on the guest room bed. Dave’s hand is curled tight around the hockey puck that Daniel gave him.

Daniel sits on the edge of the bed watching Dave sleep. Such a different feeling than this afternoon when he and Dave had talked about telling people, argued actually, before finally succumbing to sleep. He’d awakened with his fingers entwined with Dave’s, alarm ringing by the bedside, calling them to once again go their separate ways. It wouldn’t be as easy as Dave believed it to be. They’d still have to go out there and face each other on the ice, watch as the other person got hit and not be able to do anything about it. It wasn’t as if the team was going to lay off now that they knew about him and Dave.

The team knew about him and Dave.

Fighting down a hit of panic, he gets up from the bed and starts to pace. Why does he have to deal with this now when the playoffs are only a week away? It isn’t fair. And now, he sounds like a four-year-old. Just perfect.

“You’re thinking too loud,” says Dave.

Daniel turns toward the figure on the bed and there is Dave, his Dave. And every worry that went through Daniel’s mind suddenly disappears.

“Usually I wake up in Kaner’s room with a Gatorade hangover, but this is a nice surprise.”

“Talking about surprises…”

“What?”

“You were four.”

“And three-quarters. I always liked that age. I’ve been able to change since juniors. I don’t have any control over it. It just happens sometimes. And then the team has to publish something about ‘lower body injury’ to cover up the time I miss.”

“So the last time you were here?”

“My ankle was really hurt. Sometimes a lower body injury is just a lower body injury.”

“So you de-age and when you grow up again, do you remember anything?”

He turns the puck around in his hand. “You scored a goal for me. I’m not sure I should really appreciate that.”

“I’m not sure I should appreciate you declaring your love for me in front of my teammates.”

“It’ll make it easier when I propose.”

“Propose what?” Daniel says, smiling.

“Bastard. Don’t worry, beloved. It won’t happen tomorrow.”

“I hope not. You have to be in Edmonton.”

“Or we could just not tell anyone that I changed back.” Reaching for Daniel’s hand, he pulls Daniel down on the bed.

And, with everything that happened to Daniel in the past twenty-four hours, having more time with the man he loves doesn’t seem like a bad idea.


End file.
